Lover I Don't Have To Love
by droppedmysonic
Summary: My first story for the Glee Kink Meme - established Puck/Kurt tries bondage for the first time and Puck keeps going even though Kurt wants, NEEDS to stop. Rated M for explicitness and violence.
1. Chapter 1

It had started as a game, more or less. Their eyes met while Puck was checking out the hot substitute teacher at lunch and Kurt happened to be eating an unnecessarily juicy fruit salad. Neither of them could think of a reason not to play.

It escalated, of course. Smoldering gazes on the sly, bending over innocently, sexual innuendo that no one else caught.

Puck was sure he was going to win until Kurt started getting serious. The crinkly ripping sound one day behind Puck after Mr. Schuester was finished talking was distracting and he knew, he knew it was an awful idea, but he glanced.

Kurt was unwrapping a lollipop. With his teeth. He stopped when Puck looked at him and stared with wide, falsely innocent eyes. "How many licks does it take?"

"Uhhhh."

Kurt grinned a self-satisfied grin. He leaned in closer. "How many licks does it take to... get to the center of a... Tootsie Roll Pop?"

Puck found his brain again. "I don't think it counts as licking if you shove the whole thing in your mouth at once."

"I don't do that. I like to take my time."

Puck grinned. "I never said that's what you do. I speak from personal experience."

That led to the first time. And it pissed Puck off that Kurt managed to win every round after that. He was beginning to think that Kurt had outmaneuvered him. He had played the coy and naive card, but that wasn't how it was. It pissed him off. It reminded him of his father.

Every time they played a game – chess, checkers, what have you – his father would begin by letting Puck win. Halfway through the game, he turned around and demolished his young son. Puck could deal with losing, but not the way his father's need to win crushed his feelings. His father didn't want to spend time with his son. He wanted to prove he was better than. And then when his father left, Puck found himself inferior to a man who couldn't bear up the brunt of such small responsibilities. Such tiny, tiny responsibilities – ones that Puck now had to shoulder. He managed well enough and derived a small amount of pleasure from succeeding where his father failed, but there was still that sense of losing and having lost.

This game wasn't fun anymore. He had a burning desire to win in football, yeah, but that was because he was Noah Puckerman. The other things – well, those really were just for fun, and when the prize was sex, there was no way to really lose. Except now. Santana had been like this, kind of, but she wasn't as ruthless, vindictive. He never thought he'd say someone was more ruthless and vindictive than Santana, but there it was.

"I'm done," he told Kurt. And he walked away.

He was halfway home when the text came. "Why?"

"Because I just can't do this anymore."

"Why?"

Why. That word struck Puck as the most evil word in the world, because after his father left, it was all his mother and little sister could say.

Then, he couldn't answer.

Now, he didn't want to.

"Sore loser? ;]"

He had to stifle a little chuckle. Sore. It was an amusing pun, but -

"Not exactly. Just drop it and forget any of it happened."

Hours later, the call came. "Please, Puck? Don't do this."

"Why do you care? It's just a game. We knew that."

"...Not really. At least – well, I didn't think it was anymore." Kurt's voice was kind of small.

Puck almost caved then. But he paused to think. "Another complicated maneuver to humiliate me."

"What? No – and – another? Puck, I was never trying to humiliate you."

Puck hung up.

It was incredibly late that night when Kurt showed up at his door. The texts and missed calls woke Puck up out of a sound sleep. Against his better judgment, he opened the door, and there was Kurt, looking terrible. "Do you really think I was trying to humiliate you?"

Puck stepped aside to let him in and Kurt turned those huge eyes on him, half-whispering, half-singing in the night, "pressing hard against your jeans, your tongue in my mouth, trying to keep the words from coming out. You didn't care to know who else may have been you before... I want a lover I don't have to love. I want a boy who's so drunk he doesn't talk. Where's the kid with the chemicals? I got a hunger and I can't seem to get full. I need a meaning I can memorize; the kind I have always seems to slip my mind..."

He recognized the song and the desperation, and he caved. Pulling Kurt up to his room, hating himself for his weakness, he laid down on the bed. Kurt straddled him, grinding, pulling their clothes off. He slowed as he leaned down to put his lips against Puck's ear. Breathing raggedly, he whispered the last lines. "Life's no storybook. Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt. Do you like to hurt?"

And Puck responded, still caught up in his own self-hate. "I do, I do-"

"Then hurt me," Kurt said, finishing the song. "Then hurt me. Then hurt me."

Puck didn't understand at first, but when Kurt handed him the tape, it didn't take him long. He bound Kurt's wrists together, his ankles to the bottom of the bed. He taped his mouth shut, and Kurt just closed his eyes like a lamb being taken to the slaughter.

Puck stared at the other boy for a few minutes. Kurt felt ashamed by it. He never had before, but something had changed now.

Puck began to touch him roughly, rubbing the spots he knew turned Kurt on the most. Then he started biting. They were almost painful at first, and then they were definitely painful. Kurt began to whimper, but stopped himself.

It wasn't right, Puck thought furiously. He hadn't won. Kurt was letting him win. It wasn't the way it was supposed to work. He growled and backhanded Kurt viciously. Kurt's head snapped to the side violently and he began to cry silently. He said nothing, though. He couldn't. His mouth was sealed shut both physically and emotionally. He would not have said a word even if he could.

It made Puck angrier. He didn't even bother to prepare Kurt – he just rammed into him with a guttural moan that contrasted with the short, muffled scream Kurt uttered. Puck rolled his hips into the other boy, who whined painfully again, tears coming faster now. Over and over, he pushed his way to oblivion, moaning like some kind of savage. He exploded into Kurt, who was now sobbing quietly. The sounds of their breathing mingled with Kurt's crying and Puck's soft noises of arousal until Puck pulled out and saw the blood. His breath caught in his throat and a vague terror entered his heart. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry – this is going to hurt but it's better –"

He tore the strips of tape off in swift motions. There was blood coming out of Kurt's mouth, too, presumably from when Puck had struck him. The vague terror solidified into absolute terror.

Kurt just curled up into a ball, still crying. Puck had no idea what to do but to apologize, over and over, but his voice quickly fell quiet and he tried to hold back his own tears. He hadn't cried since his father left.

Kurt mumbled something. "What?" Puck asked desperately.

"I need a shower," Kurt croaked.

Puck tried to help Kurt up, but he whimpered with pain and collapsed. Puck wordlessly pulled Kurt into his arms, carrying him into the shower. He set him down carefully on the bathroom floor, where Kurt shuddered from the cold. "I'm sorry," Puck whispered again. He turned the water on and picked Kurt up again, gently easing him into the shower. Kurt held onto him for dear life. There was a desperation in his eyes, the kind a wounded puppy shows to its tormentor. Puck prayed that he would have the strength – it wasn't winning, what he'd just done. It was the sickest form of losing. It was what his father had done to him, a thousand times magnified. He whispered his apologies again and again, softly stroking Kurt's hair as the hot water ran out. He turned the water off and reached for a towel. He slowly began to dry the other boy off, tenderly placing the towel to Kurt's quickly bruising face.

"Please, say something," Puck murmured desperately once they were both dry and clothed.

"I..." Kurt started. "I'm sorry."

Puck was dumbstruck. "Why are you apologizing?"

Kurt began to cry again. "I deserved it."

"No, no, you didn't. You didn't deserve that. No one deserves that. Especially not you."

He gently wiped the tears away from Kurt's face. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but there was something there that urged him to protect the boy he had just – well, he didn't want to say the word, and Kurt would deny that that was what it was if he did. Hesitantly, he wrapped his arms around Kurt's shoulders. Kurt collapsed into the hug. Puck was immensely relieved and immensely terrified at the same time. The implicit forgiveness was not lost on him. That implicit forgiveness had been understood since the first time Kurt's face had been acquainted with a grape slushie. The fear, though – the fear of the escalating abuse that Puck recognized in himself now – no. It would go no further. He refused to let it. He couldn't – no. And no one at school would ever touch Kurt again, he would make sure of that. It had gone on long enough.

He very gently pulled Kurt onto his side, then laid down next to him, wrapping his arms around him. Kurt buried his face in Puck's chest and Puck rested his chin on top of the other's head.

No. Never again.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Due to the overwhelming (I consider it overwhelming) response to Lover I Don't Have To Love on both the prompt and here and the fact that I secretly LOVELOVELOVE (okay it's not a secret) angst, this is getting continued. Damn you, one-shot that was too good to leave that way. It might change into a sequel because… well, let's not spoil the ending._

Kurt's phone had been buzzing incessantly for the last half hour, but Puck was loathe to wake him up. He tried to disentangle himself to reach over and turn it off and managed to get enough of himself free to grab it. He looked at the name and cursed. Of course Kurt's father would be calling. Puck pinched the bridge of his nose and began to gently shake the small boy (God, he looked so small and pale right now) to wake him up.

He woke up all right – with a gasp and a jump, and then a groan of pain. Puck bit his lip, handed the phone over. "Your phone kept going off. It was your dad. I think he's been calling for half an hour."

Kurt's mouth silently formed the word "shit".

"I need an excuse. Think of an excuse," he whispered.

Puck shrugged. "All I've got is giving birth, and since you're not pregnant…"

"Mercedes had a pregnancy scare and called me. Good enough. Staying at her house, she's asleep though."

Puck marveled at his ability to lie on command.

"Yeah, sorry, Dad. Wait, no, good reason, I swear. Mercedes texted me in a panic. She thought she was pregnant… Yes, that Mercedes. Well, she was dating this kid Puck for a while and he's known for getting girls knocked up, so… Yeah, true. So I figured I might as well stay over here. Yeah, she's probably coming over tomorrow. Okay, bye." Kurt ended the call and began texting.

That comment about getting girls knocked up kind of stung, but he wasn't going to say a damn thing about it. He deserved so much more than an unintentional emotional stab.

Kurt snapped his phone shut, sighing. It buzzed again and he opened it back up. "Good," he announced to no one in particular. "I'm going over to Mercedes' now." He stood up, hissed in pain, and sat back down, which hurt even more. An unintelligible sound of pain that was something like "mmfwwr" came out of his mouth.

"No, you're not," Puck said. "You're staying right here till the morning, and I am going to go sleep on the couch." He was out the door before Kurt could even protest.

Puck flopped down on the graying couch in his living room, pulling an old blanket over himself. It wasn't comfortable, really, but there was no way Kurt could go anywhere right now, and there was no way Puck could face him much longer. It was a good thing it was Friday. Maybe by Monday Kurt would be able to walk halfway normally. _Okay, sleep is probably not an option tonight,_ Puck thought. _TV it is, then._

He didn't really watch the reruns of decades-old sitcoms that played all night. He stared at the screen, he saw Fran Drescher get overdramatic half a dozen times before she turned into Roseanne Barr, but he didn't really care. His brain was too busy feeling guilty. Around 8, his sister woke up, ran downstairs. He tossed the remote to her. "Fell asleep watching TV," he offered as an explanation, then started to climb up the stairs.

"There's someone in your room," she said matter-of-factly. Brat.

"How much?"

"Five bucks."

"Fine."

"Ten."

"Don't even try it." He dragged himself up the stairs, exhausted. He hadn't noticed his mother leaving around 6; she must have left through the back door. Well, she hadn't noticed Kurt, or she would have found her son and demanded to know what was going on. Maybe she'd heard the TV and assumed Puck was downstairs, passing by his bedroom altogether.

He gently pushed the door open. Kurt was staring at the ceiling. "Um. Hi," Puck said quietly.

Kurt just stared at the ceiling.

"Do you need anything?" Puck asked.

"I would appreciate some aspirin right now. Or a gun."

Puck left, grabbed a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water, brought them back. "A gun?"

"I'm not sure if I'm shooting you or me yet, though," Kurt replied, shaking out way more aspirin than was recommended on the bottle.

"You're gonna go deaf if you take that many aspirin," Puck said.

Kurt furrowed his eyebrows. "Where did you hear that ridiculous idea?"

"No, really," Puck insisted. "I mean, not permanently, but whenever I take that many, I can't hear anything right all day, and you're smaller than me so it will probably be worse."

"Good, I won't have to hear your stupid voice," Kurt grumbled.

Puck sighed. This was getting ridiculous. Kurt was moodier than Quinn at this point. He supposed Kurt had a reason to be upset, but really, he should stick to being angry or depressed or hurt instead of switching moods like that. It was exhausting, and he told Kurt this.

"You're right," he said evenly. "Of course I should have the emotional range of a teaspoon."

Puck raised his eyebrows. "You know, I feel like I should be impressed with your ability to quote Harry Potter under duress, but I'm going to instead use this as case in point. See, now you're adding sarcasm."

"Come here for a second," Kurt said. Puck obliged and instantly regretted it when Kurt punched him in the face. It wasn't as painful as if Karofsky had decked him, for example, but there was definitely more force there than the last time Santana hit him, and that hurt pretty bad.

Puck swallowed the stream of curse words that wanted to pour out of his mouth. "I deserved that."

"Damn right you did."

"We should probably talk about this."

"Probably, but we won't."

Puck rolled his eyes. "Why not?"

"Because I've really had enough of crying today," Kurt sighed. Puck wasn't sure how to respond to this.

"The longer we wait to talk about it, the more we won't want to," Puck informed him.

Kurt glared at him. "You don't seem to understand that I already don't want to."

Puck exhaled heavily, trying not to start yelling. He had shown enough aggression toward Kurt for a lifetime. He inhaled. "Fine. I'll tell you a story, and you can just sit there and pretend you're ignoring me."

"Once upon a time, there was a happy family. There was a mother, a father, and a little boy. Except they weren't quite as happy as they seemed. There was something wrong somewhere. The father was mean, a lot of the time, though it didn't seem intentional at first. He would put down his son and wife and laugh about it, as though it was the most natural and amusing thing in the world for them to have countless shortcomings. If the son did well in a subject, he was too smart. If he failed, he was too stupid. If he did okay, he was too average. The wife never cooked the food he wanted, didn't clean things well enough. He started to hit them to try to teach them the 'right' way to do things, but there was never a 'right' way. They were always confused, afraid, but they still tried so hard to get his approval.

"The boy tried to copy his father's behaviors, thinking that might be the 'right' thing. He beat up other boys, thinking that if he proved he was better than every other boy, at least his father would know he had the best son, even if he wasn't good enough.

"And then, the mother was pregnant again and the father was happy for a while, so the boy already loved the little life growing in his mother's belly, loved it before seeing the weird fuzzy photos, loved her. Then she was born and she cried and screamed and made dirty diapers and it was annoying, but he still loved her. His father got angry again, though. And he stayed angry. And the boy still wanted his father's approval, so much.

"It stopped when he was eleven. His sister was three. He came home from school with a picture he'd drawn of her – she was really the only person to love him unconditionally in that house. And she was crumpled in the corner, and there was blood. His mother was trying to shelter her from the kicks and blows his father rained down on them but she wasn't doing very well. That was the first, last, and only time he ever fought back against his father. It was the only time he needed to. He broke quite a few of his father's bones. Almost killed him. The father tried to press charges when he could move again, but when the entire story started to come out, he ran away, knowing there was no way he'd get away with it all.

"He never came back and the boy had to fill his shoes. He developed all these weird issues. He kept beating up other kids and he had an Oedipal complex the size of Alaska. He had a job by the time he was 12 because his mother could barely make ends meet as is. He did okay at filling his father's shoes, all in all, until he started making stupid mistakes. He got a girl knocked up. But it got worse.

"Instead of coming clean about how much someone meant to him, how much this person's feelings meant, he hurt him. He hurt him very badly. He supposed it was because the other boy's attitude reminded him of his father's, but this kid wouldn't go away and he wouldn't hit back. He figured if he hurt him like he hurt his father, he'd go away. But he realized this kid wasn't like his father. He realized that he didn't want him to go away, that this kid was a much better person than his father, than he himself, because he wasn't much better than his father, if he ever was at all.

"He realized that he made a lot of the same mistakes his father made and that he could be better than his father if he owned up to them and fixed them now before they went any further. That was the one thing his father never did – owned up to his mistakes. So he started owning up to his mistakes and trying to fix them. He had no idea what to do to fix the most recent one, but he knew he had to somehow, no matter what he had to do and how long it took, because he needed to be a better person. He realized that he should want to be a better person than he was yesterday instead of measuring himself by his father, who was no kind of role model at all anyway. And at the end of this story, there's no happy ending, because he hasn't fixed everything yet, and the story's still in progress, and he doesn't know what to do. There might not be a happy ending, at least not for him, but he has to try to at least let everyone else's lives go on the way they did before he made his damn stupid mistakes, and he's got to make a lot of apologies."

They were both crying by now. Puck was totally lost. He'd run out of words and he was more than a little shocked; he hadn't been planning any of that and frankly, he hadn't been consciously aware of his issues until they slipped out in the middle of that speech.

"I know…" he began hesitantly. "I know it's not an excuse for what I did, but… I don't know."

Kurt turned his head to look at Puck. He looked like he wanted to say something but was struggling with it. He sat up painfully, bit his lip, stared at his hands. "Noah… come here, please."

Puck was startled. Very few people ever called him that, and usually it was because he was in trouble. So that was going to be the way he'd have to apologize. He tried to memorize Kurt's face. Somehow the fact that Kurt was leaving him, or wanted him to leave, or wanted whatever the ending of this whatever it was should be called made him unbearably sad.

He was surprised, then, when Kurt wrapped his arms around him, pulling him down to the bed, holding him there, burying his face in his chest. "I didn't know. No one did."

"What?" Puck asked, confused.

"You've been in so much pain for so long," Kurt murmured. "I mean, I'm pissed, and I'm hurt, and I'm upset, and all those things, but more than that I just want to sit here and cry and tell you I forgive you, even though I don't, because I don't want you to feel any worse than you already do."

"But…"

"Shh," Kurt said. "Just… I can't forgive you just yet. That'd be kind of stupid anyway. I don't trust you 100%, but… well, I'm not really mad or afraid of you or anything. It's kind of like we're starting back at zero. Everything's been shaken up and turned upside down and I have no idea what has happened the past few months, but I know I don't want to give up just yet. I don't think I can. I'm too far deep into this to give up…"

"So am I," Puck sighed. "So am I."

_Keep an eye out for the sequel! Coming soon to a computer near you._


End file.
